| Mulam | |
|---|---|
| Spoken in | China |
| Region | Luocheng County, Hechi, northern Guangxi |
| Ethnicity | 210,000 (2000) |
| Native speakers | 86,000 (2005) < 10,000 monolinguals |
| Language family | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | mlm |
The Mulam language Chinese: 仫佬; pinyin: Mùlǎo is a Kam–Sui language spoken mainly in Luocheng County, Hechi, northern Guangxi by the Mulao people. The greatest concentrations are in Dongmen and Siba communes. Their autonym is mu6 lam1. The Mulam also call themselves kjam1, which is probably cognate with lam1 and the Dong people's autonym "Kam" (Wang & Zheng 1980).
The Mulam language, like Dong, does not have voiced stops. However, it does contain unvoiced and voiced nasals and laterals. Its vowel system contains eleven vowels. It is a tonal language with ten tones and 65% of their vocabulary is shared with the Zhuang and Dong languages.
Since the Ming Dynasty, Chinese characters have been utilized to read and write the Mulam language. The majority of the Mulam also speak Chinese as well as the Zhuang and Dong languages.
Mulam dialects as described by Wang & Zheng (1980) include (all of which are spoken in Luocheng Mulao Autonomous County):
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